


Your Best Friends Forgive You, Your Best Friends Forget, You Get Old

by planethunter



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Childhood Trauma, First Kiss, First Relationship, Flashbacks, Fluff, Implied One-Sided Attraction (if you squint), M/M, PTSD, Referenced Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23615302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planethunter/pseuds/planethunter
Summary: The boys return to Sheffield for the summer to find it slowly forgetting them. Dakin ropes Scripps ropes Posner into a myriad of day drinking activities at their local cricket ground.Scripps tries to balance his fledgling relationship with an increasing concern for his best friend, and the feeling that he can't stay in one place too long.
Relationships: David Posner/Donald Scripps, Stuart Dakin & Donald Scripps
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Your Best Friends Forgive You, Your Best Friends Forget, You Get Old

**Author's Note:**

> CW for references to suicide attempts and CSA, though neither are explicit. And cricket, obviously.
> 
> Title is from Kamakura by The Maccabees

The water made it heavier, he’s sure of it. The number of nightmares he’d had of drowning in a cold ocean in the dark and his waterlogged clothes pulling down under the waves and strangling him as he flailed against the current. Just because it wasn’t him this time didn’t make the pounding his chest subside.

Scripps’ mother always called warm weather ‘unsettling’. Especially around the beginning of July, when the contenders for hottest day of the year were out in full sprint toward the finish line and the humidity was inescapable even indoors. The pressure gave her headaches, she said, terrible headaches, it felt like the air was wrapping you layer upon layer in endless cling film. Nevertheless, she was always the first out in the back garden, wrestling with the old deckchair that had rusted further after its annual eight-month banishment to the shed and basking in the slivers of gold that crept over the fence like some sort of pale housecat. Often he’d return from his shift down the Post Office and see the tip of her red-brimmed hat through the kitchen window, grimacing into the light because she didn’t own any sunglasses. Being begrudgingly at peace with the world, it seemed, wasn’t so bad after all.

The warmth had made the grass grow wildly, trees creating canopies down the sides of avenues, but all together it felt like a bit of an anti-climax. Sheffield had greeted his return apathetic and green. Coming home had felt like waking from a dream which, at the time, appeared entirely sensible, but was quickly realised to be absurd in the cold light of consciousness. Some good things – a few great things – had happened in his first year at Oxford, but for the sake of his health and the peacefulness of his summer, Scripps was willing to pretend it didn’t exist until September drew in once again.

While the city itself was pleasant enough, the university was an altogether strange place for a whole host of reasons: the boys being by far the greatest. They rarely talked at length on the subject, but sometime early in the second semester while they were laying silverfish traps, Dakin had said they weren’t all that bad. At first, in fact, Dakin had pretended to love them (the Oxford boys, not the silverfish, though Scripps drew little distinction): he’d joined the law and hockey societies and attended all their socials, wore their clothes and lengthened his vowels and laughed at their jokes. They welcomed him with curious amusement; Dakin loved the attention they gave him. Superficially, it was the natural development of the man who had always excelled in the role of charming social butterfly, social climber ( _fucking class traitor_ , as Akthar had branded him only half-jokingly) pushing his way through the ranks, never going more than two yards on a night out without bumping into someone he knew, and never leaving without some long-haired girl hanging on his arm and every word.

Scripps didn’t hate uni – in fact on a good day he might go as far as to say he loved it. But today wasn’t a good day. It was a Saturday, and so he was being reminded of the other reason his stint in the South had felt like a hallucination.

In his part of the world, Saturday was for sitting on a grassy verge in the sun at square leg and drinking warm, overpriced cider out of a plastic cup. He and Dakin had forged a solid tradition out of it over the years – making at least the last day of just about every league game at their local ground since they were nine years old (the cider, granted, didn’t become staple until a few years in; even with Dakin’s masterful charm and failed attempts to grow facial hair, there wasn’t a chance in hell of them getting served before fifteen, especially what with the bartender knowing them since they were born). It was a strange thing to have come about, because Scripps had to admit he didn’t really care all that much for cricket – or any sport, for that matter – it was just too easy to slip back into old habits. He’d tried it at Oxford (spectating, he’d never so much as bowled a single ball and never planned to) and had at first thought he’d accidentally walked into a different game entirely: opposing teams would routinely shake hands, pat each other on the back, saunter seemingly without a care in the world around the field between overs, smiling and sharing jokes. Disturbing, to say the least. Here, or, so he presumed, anywhere north of the Mersey, you were lucky (or perhaps disappointed) if an innings ended with no swearing insults or fists thrown. It may have been inconsequential to him in the most part, but watching cricket be reduced to the leisurely agreements between fine gentlemen felt like an insult to everyone Scripps and everyone he’d ever known. It was tooth-and-claw competitiveness up here. Feral, and thus alive.

With that pitch, it was a miracle he’d managed to convince Posner to come along that weekend to watch them get hammered into the ground by the visitors from two towns over. Most of it must have been loneliness, he thought, because Posner was even less interested in sport than he was and distrustful of anywhere to which he couldn’t cycle, but being able to spend time together so spontaneously was a now a novelty to them – they’d spent the past few months having to plan at least a day in advance.

It was a different situation now, too. Things had happened at university that neither of them had much expected, but at the same time felt was always inevitable. Dakin had said it was inevitable when Scripps told him, and that was the closest thing to a positive reaction they ever got out of him.

Scripps had told him at three in the morning after a night out, the kitchen light had been painful to open his eyes in and Dakin hadn’t looked up from the cigarette he was rolling on the counter despite the countless times Scripps had told him not to. “You could do better,” he’d said, thumbing the overfilled skin. “If you wanted to.”

Cambridge, it turned out, wasn’t actually that far away, at least not since the invention of the train. Posner was somewhere in their flat almost every weekend, and saved Scripps the journey with the excuse that his flatmates were obnoxious and vigorously opposed to any strangers staying the night. He made those weekends, Scripps decided, whether they went out just the two of them or with a group (though very rarely with Dakin). His friends loved him. There was a polaroid of him from the third or fourth time he stayed over, originally taped to the bottom corner of Scripps’ bedroom noticeboard but that he’d since taken home with him. It currently resided in his wallet, accompanying little else, and Scripps tried to not feel embarrassment at the number of times he would pretend to himself to search for change just so he had an excuse to look at it. Posner smiled gleefully into the camera, the Yorkshire flag pulled from where it hung over the disused curtain rails in their flat and draped around his shoulders like an Olympian athlete, a caption in his handwriting below: A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD NEVER SMELL AS SWEET…FOR THE NAME WOULD BE LANCASHIRE!

His and Dakin’s living room at university was adorned with a tall bay window, and before it an elegant wooden grand piano gifted to Scripps by his grandparents that had been a six-man job to get up the stairs. Above it hung the white rose. Dakin had laughed when Scripps pulled the old thing, worn and faded from exposure, out of the last box, and made some dismissive _for fuck’s sake_ comment – none of them were much ones to revel in county pride – and so the flag became some sort of ironic homage to a stereotype, alongside Scripps’ habit of turning the heating down whenever he passed the thermostat.

Their team’s batsman hit the visitors for four through the covers just as Dakin strode up to them, a pint in either hand (both for himself – Scripps couldn’t think of any time he’d ever bought him a drink).

“Afternoon, compadres,” his voice was partially drowned out by the flurry of shouts around them as he sat not, in all likelihood, unintentionally in the tight space between Scripps and Posner. “Fine day for it.”

That it was: forecast for twenty-seven degrees and twenty-six of them had shown up. Scripps took a sip of his own drink and turned his attention back to the pitch. The bowler was roughing the ball up so furiously against his trousers it looked as though he was trying to break it in two, the leather leaving a stark red mark on the white fabric over his thigh.

“It's so utterly pointless I can’t believe people don’t keel over with boredom,” Posner muttered. He was unusually relaxed, as he had been quite frequently of late – no longer flinching like a little bird with tense shoulders but stretched out on the grass, resting back on his elbows with one hand around his pint and the other holding _Meadowlands_ as so to guard his eyes from the obscenity before him.

Dakin shoved him on the shoulder. “You philistine, Posner. You’re supposed to be a Yorkshireman.”

Posner huffed, deftly turning the page in his book. “Not by choice.”

Scripps knew Dakin was doing it deliberately. It was because he felt he had to overcompensate – he didn’t know how to act when the people he was so used to living vicariously through him suddenly eloped and formed a life of their own together, quite literally. This time last year, before it happened, such a performance would have annoyed Scripps. Now he just glanced over at his friend, checking what wavered in his expression.

If anything did, it was quickly missed. All he saw was Dakin try to drink both his pints at the same time and spill most of it down his front.

“Fuck.”

“What did you do that for, you prick?”

He handed the half-empty cups to Scripps as he frantically brushed himself down. “Just wanted to see if I could do it.”

He had been in the room next door to them when they'd first had sex (the same night of their first kiss – uncharacteristically forward for both of them, perhaps, but then what was characteristic when you’d never done it before?); Scripps' bed lay against the shared wall which must have been put in since the flat was built because it was thin plaster and useless in the face of Dakin's many escapades. That put Scripps in half a mind to get his revenge, he’d thought about it as he kissed Posner's neck, under his jaw, sliding one hand up his shirt over the thin warm skin at his ribs, the vibrations of his friend's body under him, climbing up his thighs, from quiet moans he tried to stifle with sheepish giggling. They'd both been giggling, between hungry kisses and short, ragged breaths – all of which Scripps, to his admitted shame, hoped had been loud enough. Nothing compared to the screamers Dakin would bring home with him, of course, but there was only so far he was willing to go.

It had started out very drunkenly, the most drunk Scripps had ever seen Posner in his life – though his newfound confidence since rubbing shoulders with whatever Eton group alumni haunted the halls of Cambridge could well have skewed any previous reference he had for that. Of the initiating moment, Scripps remembered actually very little: they had left his friends in the smoking area, dipping through a gap in the barrier and out onto the street in search of the nearest takeaway. Then one of them (he didn’t recall who) pushed the other in some playful shoving match that sent them stumbling into an alley behind the bins of a Lebanese, and in the struggle their faces had come so close he remembered – vividly – the feeling of hot breath on his face. The kiss itself was a haze, at the time a spur of the moment thing, if that could be believed now. If that could ever be believed, in fact, because by the time he was counting change for their taxi driver outside the door to his flat Scripps felt stubbornly sober, but no less dizzy. None of it had been planned; there was no illicit brushing of fingers under pub tables or lingering eye contact across the kitchen or off-hand remarks that they found themselves second-guessing – that had all followed afterwards instead. _Trust us_ , Scripps had thought, breathing in the scent of Posner’s hair as they lay curled up in his childhood bed on the first Thursday night since their return, _trust us to mess up something that was supposed to be so easy._

That was well over a month ago now. Things had progressed more or less evenly since then, though Scripps was still working his way up to saying _I love you_ and he had no idea when the right time was to do it. A week ago he’d convinced himself that he’d left it too late, that really he should have said it on that first night when everything else big and important was apparently happening. Now he was worried that if he said it here it would get left behind in Sheffield, all the long grass and tree branches twisting around it and swallowing it into the earth.

In any case, _now_ was certainly not the right time to say it, because he’d have to lean over Dakin’s stupidly sprawled frame between them to do it. He was still trying to scrub the beer out of his trousers, rubbing them only intermittently so that he could pretend that he was calm about it, his slick black hair softened to a dark brown in the glorious sunlight. “What does God think of your drinking Strongbow, Scrippsy? I thought monks did away with earthly pleasures.”

 _If you consider Strongbow an earthly pleasure, you lead a very miserable life_ , Scripps thought, and with it winced at the taste more than usual when he next took a sip. “If that was the case, you'd have never had mead. Or Buckfast.”

“Well, neither of those would make any difference to me because I’m not Scottish or a paedophile.”

Scripps heard Posner snort at the resolutely unfunny joke. Old habits die hard, apparently, but he wasn’t going to let himself feel jealous. “And I’m not a monk. Me and God are having a bit of space at the minute.”

“What, so you can fit other things in His place?” Dakin looked Posner purposefully up-and-down to illustrate his point. If Posner noticed, he had perfected a lack of response. “I’m sure you don’t need a God-sized space to do that.”

The characteristic wail of the bowler’s appeal erupted from the pitch, his stocky arms flailing stupidly about the place, pleading an lbw. Dakin was less convinced. “Fuck off would that have hit leg stump.”

Scripps’ eyes flickered from pitch to the page of Posner’s book as the umpire raised a damning finger into the air that propelled the crowd into uproar, less interested with the decision than craning to see what poem Posner was onto. He’d lent him the book, a collection of works by Louise Glück – or rather Posner had sat on his bedroom floor and rifled through his bookshelf, sending spirals of dust cascading into the strips of sunlight that filtered through the blinds.

Dakin scoffed, before taking a long drink from one of the now sticky cups that had since been handed back to him. “Fucking joke.”

He had sworn in front of Scripps' mother before Scripps did. She adored Dakin, he knew she did, he always said that _mums just love me_ like it was some inexplicable superpower he had woken up with one morning. By the time they were twelve, friends for a measly four years by that point, she had given him a spare key to their front door – one time having to come round to let Scripps into his _own house_ because he had lost his somewhere in the depths of his bag, until it re-emerged, conveniently, the day after he’d trekked all the way into town to get a new one cut. Dakin was also the only other person besides her own son that Mrs Scripps called _duck_ ; she had done ever since they were kids and continued to do so into their early adulthood, to the point that she hadn’t called him Dakin in years and Stuart on only a handful of occasions.

That detail never crossed Scripps' mind on the freezing tiles of the bathroom floor, with the damp, heavy weight over his knees, slumped over haphazardly as a homage to his lack of strength. He'd not even noticed himself crying at first, with panic and frustration, until he went to wipe the wet from his face to find it wasn’t the same blood that covered his hands.

He gripped at lifeless shoulders, brushed gentle fingers over damp and bloodied skin. _Come on, duck. Come on._

The batsman was refusing to walk. A small, argumentative crowd of fielders had begun to congregate around where he was pleading his case rather theatrically, both parties attempting to shout down the other while the umpire – a stout but not ugly older man with thinning blond hair – firmly stood by his original decision. Posner peered over the edge of his book at the unfolding drama.

“You know,” he said, “I feel like this is the closest we’ll come to experiencing what it must have been like to watch a Shakespeare play in his time.”

Perhaps he had a point, though Scripps’ mind was favoured more towards a gladiator fight in a Roman amphitheatre. Now that he thought of it, however, he couldn’t think of the last time he’d attended a game where the poor young lad dropped in at short leg had come off pouring with blood after being struck in the jaw by the ball; that used to be quite the common occurrence. _Won’t be long before they start giving helmets to fielders_ , he could hear his father mutter, _England team’s full of right poofters these days_. And his mother’s response, _you go and tell that to Botham’s face_.

Dakin grinned victoriously. “Not keeling over with boredom anymore?”

The corners of the pages of Posner’s book fluttered in the gentle breeze, and he stilled them with the side of his forefinger. “It’s only interesting when they’re not actually playing.”

The rest of the day progressed, as did the number of pints, with little more incident. They finished sometime in the early evening, all out for 217, ready to do it all over again bright and early the following morning. When stumps was called, men from either team filtered off together, embracing and shaking hands with those who only moments prior had been their bitter opponents.

Scripps was impressed by Posner’s endurance in spite of his professed disinterest and said so on their walk home.

“That sounds like a euphemism.”

“Well it’s not. Although you’re right, I’m already well acquainted with your stamina.”

Posner shoved him hard with a horrified shriek encased in laughter, so hard it sent Scripps flying almost off the kerb. “You’re fucking disgusting.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Think of how many angels must be weeping now because of you. Enough to cause another flood.”

“I’ve already given them plenty of reasons.”

“And I’m sure not as many as some people. Is Dakin still fucking men twice his age because he’s frustrated that he went through his first year of uni hung up on a crush he had on his sixth form history teacher?”

“Jesus.” Scripps was taken aback, more than anything, by the fact Posner had managed to get through the whole thing in one breath. “No. I mean- that’s not why. Irwin’s got nowt to do with it.”

“But he is.”

Scripps tried to mask his reaction. “He’s had a hard time adjusting.”

That was all he wanted to say about it, but now he was kicking himself for not at least asking Dakin, just briefly before they had parted ways at the gate, if he was all right. The answer would have come like clockwork: _course I am, why?_ And Scripps would say _no, just checking_ , and that was all that needed to be said – just so he knew that he was still here. That he wasn’t leaving.

Most (but not all) nights, Scripps dreamt about it. Sometimes it was just red and black, more like tar than blood, thick and smeared over the white ceramic; other times it was more painfully detailed, frame by frame, from opening the bathroom door to being jostled around in a speeding ambulance, watching life hang in the balance before his very eyes. Maybe that was his brain’s way of pulling an _I wish I’d seen the warning signs_ , though it wasn’t just his subconscious that spent its time ploughing through memories for something that he’d missed. One came up more frequently than the rest: two nights before it happened, an otherwise inconspicuous Sunday. Scripps had emerged from the kitchen to add the empty milk carton that had been put back in the fridge to the pile of recycling at the door he kept forgetting to take out every time he left the flat, and saw Dakin standing just beyond the doorway in the dark living room. He was very still, as though only an apparition, as though if Scripps stared at him for long enough he would become translucent, his hands raised slightly at his sides like he was trying to remember what he'd gone in there for.

The kettle had clicked quietly off behind him, rattling in its dock with the force of the steam billowing from its spout. He left it behind, making for the darkness at the end of the corridor. Just as he reached the doorway, he said something. _Stu, you all right?_ Something along those lines. But Dakin didn’t respond, as if he really was a ghost – unperturbed by this world because he was so engrossed in another far away from here. His face was hard to see in the dark, but it seemed unfocused, at least on anything in front of him; turned instead inside him, burrowing deep like the head of a tick, leading him somewhere Scripps could only follow so far.

(This had only happened, or threatened to happen, once before; another memory his subconscious liked to dust off on occasion. They'd been in Dakin's house in Sheffield the year before, meeting up before heading down to the pub with a few of the other lads, and he had told Scripps that he was just getting something from his room and that he would be down in two seconds. Two seconds passed, and then two minutes, and Scripps had been here enough times that Dakin's mother had told him he didn’t have to knock, _the door’s always open_ , so he knew his way about the place. Big house – bigger than any of the rest of theirs. He'd pushed Dakin's door open without knocking, and saw him standing at his window, looking out over the gardens and fences, digging a compass needle into the ball of his palm so nonchalantly he probably didn’t even know he was doing it, a thin dark trail of blood advancing down his forearm. This was just after Hector died, after he saw Irwin in the wheelchair and confessed to Scripps that the sight had made him want to be sick, which was strange, he said, because wheelchairs didn’t bother him much at all. It was what weird people did, all that stuff; mutilating themselves, zoning out like they’d been put under a trance. Kids like that were friendless, shrewd little creatures that muttered to themselves along the school corridors and grew up to become tenants of their parents' basements. Blind moles. Dakin wasn’t a mole – he was popular and confident and normal in ways Scripps envied on occasions when he was feeling especially insecure in himself.)

Scripps had crept closer into the living room, weary floorboards creaking underneath him. When he lay his hands on Dakin’s shoulders, squeezing gently, he felt him return, if only a little – his body becoming solid again but his mind still toiling to pull itself back.

 _Come on,_ _duck_ , he said, the almost pitch black making him feel as though he had to whisper, and lead Dakin by his shoulders over to the sofa. With gentle encouragement Dakin sat, and Scripps beside him, tucked into the armrest. He knew what his friend was feeling. It was different to being drunk, none of the edges were sanded down and nothing dampened the disorienting oscillations of anxiety that swayed your stomach, falling through somewhere you’d almost forgotten about again, vivid and hard and sober. Nobody on the outside would have seen any of that, though; they’d just see a man who’d fucked it, propping his head up against his friend’s side, eyes glassy and far away but just beginning to appear in the haze over the horizon, a hopeful mirage of life making its way home.

Unconsciously, Scripps found himself stroking Dakin’s shoulder, thumbing slowly at the soft white fabric of his shirt. It was assurance for himself as much as anyone else, that he was here, Dakin was here – his friend, his best friend, safe and somewhere near calm; that time was still progressing, dragging its lame body behind it, each lurch forward providing him with the only certainty he could rely on. Certain enough that if felt right to say it out loud.

 _We can only get further away from it_ , he said, the words held closely between them, _every second that goes by, we only get further away. It can’t reach you anymore._

He pulled Dakin closer and Dakin conceded, burying his head into the crook of his neck. Scripps could feel his hair against his jaw, cold, growing back now from what had been the shortest he’d ever had it, and he could feel his breathing hitch like he was crying.

 _But you can still see it when you turn around,_ is what he wanted to say, and probably what Dakin wanted to say, too. But he didn’t.

A sudden gust of wind hurried past the window, loud and hollow through the single glazing. Scripps had looked up at it, as though he might see the breeze right there. Only the waxing moon backlit the flag above them, soaking into the threadbare fabric and accentuating the outline of the rose. He’d watched it for a while, like it would stare back at him, like he was demanding something from it, and the wind howled again.

 _You’re leaving_ , Dakin had said, a statement rather than a question. The words had echoed in Scripps’ mind ever since.

Turning the corner onto his street, he could see now all the way to its end, where the rows of semi-detacheds converged at the base of the gentle hill. With no-one around, despite perhaps the odd curtain-twitcher that he couldn’t any longer bring himself to care about, Scripps put an arm around Posner’s shoulders, pulling him in to kiss the top of his head.

“Mum’s out late – work thing. Just be us the night.”

Posner remained close, _Meadowlands_ clutched over his chest, and they walked the rest of the way down the street pressed together. The evening was a smooth transition from the afternoon: warm and clear, pink and gold reflecting off the windows on the other side of the road. Starlings had begun to congregate on the telephone wires above their heads, they like everything else glistening in the low sun as they chattered amongst themselves.

That night, in his tiny single bed at some hourless time, Posner sitting up on his forearms over Scripps’ chest and the faint sodium tint from the streetlamp outside highlighting the silhouette of his bare shoulder and the curves of his face, they were talking about everything and nothing. The poets had come up again, as they always did, and though his book had been hastily discarded somewhere on the faded carpet when Posner had become suddenly otherwise occupied, Scripps asked what his favourite line had been.

After some deliberation, Posner recited wistfully: “ _We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory_.”

“If that were true,” Scripps said, brushing tufts of hair behind Posner's ear, though it was too short to do anything in actuality, “then I would see the world a very ugly place.”

Posner tilted his head. “Are you saying you don’t?”

For a moment, Scripps just regarded him, hand still lingering on the side of his face in the dark. “No.” He smiled slightly, though it was so slight and so dark Posner might not have seen it. “I don’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Posner quotes "Nostos" by Louise Glück: 
> 
> _There was an apple tree in the yard --  
>  this would have been  
> forty years ago -- behind,  
> only meadows. Drifts  
> of crocus in the damp grass.  
> I stood at that window:  
> late April. Spring  
> flowers in the neighbor's yard.  
> How many times, really, did the tree  
> flower on my birthday,  
> the exact day, not  
> before, not after? Substitution  
> of the immutable  
> for the shifting, the evolving.  
> Substitution of the image  
> for relentless earth. What  
> do I know of this place,  
> the role of the tree for decades  
> taken by a bonsai, voices  
> rising from the tennis courts --  
> Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.  
> As one expects of a lyric poet.  
> We look at the world once, in childhood.  
> The rest is memory._


End file.
